BY LISA MACDONALD
SYDNEY — The NSW Labor government was punished by voters in the September 8 by-election for the western Sydney seat of Auburn. Labor retained the seat, which it had held with a 17% majority, but suffered an 11% swing against it.
Only 2% of that swing went to the Liberals, who won just 22% of the total vote. The field of 11 candidates included the Unity Party (which won 10.2% of the vote), whose candidate Le Lam was the previous mayor of Auburn, One Nation (4.6%), the Democrats (2.4%), the Greens (2.3%), Fred Nile's Christian Democratic Party (1.3%), and independents drawn from the various migrant communities.
The seat became a focus of statewide media attention when the former sitting member, Peter Nagle, resigned amidst accusations from his staff that he was "not interested" in talking to non-Anglo migrant constituents.
In anger, every candidate except the Greens chose to direct their preferences to the Liberals before Labor.
Their decision not to preference the ALP was, said the candidates, reinforced by inflammatory comments by Premier Bob Carr about Middle Eastern Australians in Sydney's west in the weeks leading up to the by-election.
In a collective interview with ABC-TV's Stateline program on September 7, the non-Labor candidates in the Auburn by- election, while endorsing both major parties' call for more police to fight crime, vehemently rejected Carr's efforts to racially profile criminals and blame "ethnic gangs" for local crime.
The candidates' rejection of the ALP's racist rhetoric was widely echoed on the streets of Auburn, and is undoubtedly the main reason for the swing against Labor at the poll.
As an Iraqi refugee told me at a polling booth on the day of the by-election, "First the politicians do everything to stop us from coming into Australia, then they blame us for all the bad things inside Australia."
A 24-hour, bi-lingual hotline has been set up in Sydney to record all incidents of racist abuse of Arab and Muslim people. Calls are confidential and people are being encouraged to reports incidents immediately, either directly or on behalf of others. The Racism Register phone number is 9716 2260.
[Lisa Macdonald is the Socialist Alliance candidate for the federal seat of Reid, which includes the Auburn area.]